Well, if you read my comments elsewhere, it's pretty plain that I'm no Kerry cheerleader, but I think the concern here is that the "War Room" might really be just a tool for astroturfing the blogs, and that seems like a reasonable suspicion to me.
Of course it's a tool for astroturfing blogs.
Compare to the Democrats efforts to get people to
take online polls (a recent email from the Democrats urges party members to "Look for online polls at these national news websites, and make sure to vote in every one of them"),
phone radio call-in shows,
and
write letters to the editor.
The Republicans seem to do much better in the blog world.
Apparently, the Democrats (as a party, and Kerry's folks in particular) didn't learn all that much from Dean.
These debates aren't about debating anything at all, they're an equal opportunity
platform for the two major political parties (and no other parties) and their
sponsors to try to spin things to the public.
If they had used valid HTML 4.01, this would already be in place - the alt attribute that provides a textual alternative to an image is mandatory in HTML 4.01.
The simple presence of an alt attibute does not necessarily help.
Whether through inattention, or malicious compliance, many sites have alt attributes with such informative text as "img0573957.gif" or "1x1 transparent GIF".
In the case of the former, it might be a critical image used to convey information.
The latter is an example crying for use of alt="" for an image that conveys no meaning.
It's not really hard to get an accessible site.
In a couple of days, a blog will be added to the Team Navanax web site to describe the efforts
of a semi-random team of geeks to grok web site design, accessibility, and
put up a new web site in 9 hours on October 2.
This is part of an accessible web site competition put on several
times a year in various locations by Knowbility
If I understand correctly, the question is asking about how to write the tax code so that sales taxes cannot be charged...
That wouldn't be a question. That would be a position.
The question (paraphrased) is "what is your position on taxes related to the Internet?"
My paraphrase of Kerry's unclear answer, based on
the IFTA which he cosponsored, is "I am against taxing broadband
access and in favor of allowing states to charge sales tax (as long as only
one state gets tax on each transaction)".
So, he's against your position (as inferred from what you think the question
meant to be) that there should be no sales tax on Internet commerce.
His position appears to be the same as that of President Bush.
The
IFTA was written back when the taxation situation was completely unclear
and the protection against multiple taxation seemed important to many at the time.
Specifically, they were trying to protect against attempts to have multiple states
(the state where the business resides, the state where the server resides, the
state from which the order was placed, the state to which the order was shipped)
taxing a single transaction.
It ought to be analagous to placing a phone order where there is a well-defined
prioritization to choose the single state that gets to tax.
Kerry:..."multiple or discriminatory" taxes on electronic commerce...
I have to assume Kerry did not really answer the question asked about sales taxes on internet sales,
I think that would be an incorrect assumption, the prohibition on "multiple aor discriminatory" taxes is there to prevent multiple sales taxes.
The oroginal act is a tad poor at explaining how that should be done, but it does
prevent multiple sales tax from different states being applied (it still allies state/county/municipal sales tax, but prohibits taxes from multiple states).
In other words, Kerry thinks it's OK to have sales tax, but we need to make sure
you aren't taxed by multiple states.
And let's not forget the awesome manganese nodule cover story for the Glomar Explorer. A fantastical tale of potato sized manganese nodules littering the abyssal floor of the ocean. Riches to be had for the taking. It continues to be quoted by some as a reason justifying deep sea exploration.
You: The University of Alberta does a lot of work on poker programs.
Eliza: Please go on.
You: One of their aims is to create a program that can compete in the World Series of Poker. However, poker is such a complex game (for computers, that is) that at the moment the research group would be satisfied if their program would survive the first round.
Eliza: Why do you mention computers?
You: You see, poker is more about beating another person, than about calculations. The best poker players win because they can entice their opponents to make mistakes.
Eliza:Oh, i see poker is more about beating another person than about calculations the best poker players win because they can entice their opponents to make mistakes.
RA 12, DEC -39 puts it in Hyrda, which according to 5 seconds of looking in "Distant Suns" trial version on my work Windows box, is seriously blocked by the Sun these days. It's about 45 degrees south of Leo, whenever it becomes visible.
They did identify it as 2M1207 at 230 light years.
A quick google suggests this set of coordinates from some Prospero observations in February, coordinates reproduced here (the original file has observation configuration as well):
# Prospero Observation Template File
# Created: 2004 Feb 12 [9:36:32] by saveobs.pl Version 2.2
# For: John Gizis
#
PROJECT=UDEL-04A-0005
IMGTYPE=OBJECT
OBJECT=2M1207
RA=12 07 33.4
DEC=-39 32 54
EQUINOX=2000.0
MODE=DUAL
GPS works because you can obtain your location based upon the timing signals of a number of FIXED POSITION satellites. Without knowing the locations of the reference points, you cannot determine your location.
This is not correct.
My own experience watching my GPS receiver is that the satellites (and their locations) change while I am in a relatively unchanging location. When I move 10-20 miles over a period of hours, the satellite list, and the relative locations plotted on the GPS, change completely.
According to NASA, GPS satellite have circular orbit of 20,200 km.
A
geosynchronous orbit is usually what people mean by "FIXED" and is at 35,786 km.
NOAA is responsible for providing
GPS ephemerodes and has historical data.
From reading the article, it sounds like he doesn't often pay. In the course
of the day they profile, they mention two half-cups of coffee, both complimentary.
Travel cost is still a problem.
He reduces that by sleeping in his car at Wal-Mart.
Which number can you confuse U with? And you must be pretty stupid to confuse Z with 5 or S.
You may have noticed, escpecially in some bad fonts or when it is crudely
stamped out on metal (as a VIN is), that "U" somewhat resembles the letter "V".
When you are reading old, rusty VIN plates stamped into metal 15 years ago on a
a production line, it's not that hard to confuse "Z" with "2".
a smaller minority that is blind and does not read braille
Most visually impaired people I have met do not read braille.
I have met a fair number of people with various levels of visual impairment as I
used to work at a non-profit that does web accessibility.
For example, a few centuries ago some...irrational....
This is some weird combination of revisionist history (the ancient Greeks
knew about irrational numbers) and just plain making shit up
(irrational means it can't be expressed as a ratio of integers).
See Mathworld's definition of irrational number for one more credible, and more researched,
version.
Some time later, in the 1800's... imaginary....
Imaginary numbers under a variety of names were discussed at
least as early the 16th and 17th centuries and
credible sources
claim references back to the ancient Egyptians; this reference also says
the term "imaginary" was in common use at the time of Descartes (though
makes no reference in the online material as to who coined the term).
Many less credibleonline sources
place the name as coming from Descartes and claim it to be dergatory,
but
many of those sitesappear to be copying
from some common source of unknown origin.
So, the guess that imaginary was derogatory may be correct.
I suppose one of four (calling the fact of the name and date of discovery each as
guesses at the truth)possibly correct speculations
isn't bad for just spewing stuff that sounds credible
Those programmers that do continue to work will be only the very best.
While I hope that is true, I wonder if it is?
Are "the very best" really required for the task at hand?
If the farmer analogy really applies, there might be some lessons.
Family farms are nearly dead.
People who continue to operate small farms, do it because they
are committed to the lifestyle, either through lack of alternatives
or through love of the job.
Large corporate farms have taken over much of the market and they focus
on automation to reduce the required skill (and pay) level of employees.
Is this the future of programming?
If it is, I'll probably become the analog of the
very active and productive home gardener.
I'll develop software on my own for my own use.
I'll share it with my friends.
I might even sell some for extra money on the side.
It won't, however be my living.
I don't know if that idea scares me or excites me;
it certainly causes a strong adrenalin reaction.
Your answer isn't coming up with a "schedule for working out" in your apartment, or even a gym membership. Just go outside, and run. Just go
Actually for some people, a schedule helps a lot.
Knowing the plan creates opportunity for reinforcement;
there's the habit of the plan and the guilt of not following it to help.
For some of us, a plan is really required.
With a job, a 3 month old, a wife on disability from a difficult delivery, and a 4 year old, pretty much anything I want to do has to either be scheduled or done between midnight and 2 (which is really another way of saying I've scheduled those two hours for personal time/sleep, whichever seems more imporatnt).
Thanks to scheduling, I did a 40 mile bicycle ride on Sunday averaging a not overly
pathetic 16.4 miles per hour.
I managed to do that even though I hadn't been out on my road bike in six months.
I scheduled in mountain biking time, some health club time,
hikes with the 4 year old (I'm just guessing the occasional need to carry him
a mile with 250 foot climb probably helped my endurance a little).
Doesn't matter much what you do, just about any physical activity is better
than nothing.
A plan might help if your personality or circumstances dictate.
The important thing, plan or not, is to get out and be active.
even if it is arguable these daysDo I detect the scent of an evolution denier?
I took the arguable "these days" part to be questioning if evolution is currently helping, or indeed affecting in any way, humanity any longer. It seems all of the anti-survival behavior we humans engage
in does not affect our ability to reproduce.
Destructors aren't "automatic". You have to manually free the memory,
Funny you should use that word. Creating the TCPSocket as an "automatic" variable does,
in fact, result in it being destroyed automatically when it goes out of scope.
{ TCPSocket socket(args); //... }
Similarly, if you make it an instance variable of a class, it will be automatically destroyed (and therefore closed) when the instance containing it is destroyed.
And if you feel you must use something pointer-like:
auto_ptr<TCPSocket> sock(new TCPSocket(args));
This gives transferrable ownership and the object pointed to will automatically be destroyed when
the auto_ptr is automatically destroyed (at block exit or object destruction depending on context).
C++ is filled with options that let the "Resource Aquisition is Initialisation" pattern be used with automatic resource release at automatic destruction.
In fact, Babbage once said there was only a market for five computers in the world.
Wikipedia says it was Thomas J. Watson who said that in 1943.
This was shortly before Thomas J. Watson Jr. came home from WWII and began promoting computers
heavily within IBM.
Other web source seem to agree.
IBM doesn't seem to endorse it in official material though there is a
presentation
sitting on one of their sites that mentions it.
Whether or not it's true, the lesson of the quote is that even (especially?) people on
the brink of a tipping point may not recognize the huge impact of the disruptive technology
they are working with.
Works the other way, too.
Often those promoting some cool, geeky technology assume everyone will want one,
when in fact they don't; at least not yet.
Look at the many early attempts at "portable" computers or the many attempts at handheld
devices and runs at tablet-style PCs.
Ultimately, some of those technologies caught on (and tablets still look like they might)
but at a much slower rate than anticipated.
perhaps i'm missing something here, but if someone wanted to send someone else an extremely covert message, why wouldn't they just encrypt it?
Traffic analysis.
Since not all intercepted messages can be decrypted in a timely fashion, one way
intelligence is gathered is by looking at the communication patterns independent of the
content.
Knowing that bad person A sent unknown person B some set of messages (and even moreso noting
that they were strongly encrypted) yields a strong suspicion that person B is part of the same
bad collective as person A.
By sending many messages all over that are noise, the real communication is lost in
the noise.
Not just the data in the communication, but the data about the communication.
UML lets you use an
Activity Diagram for this as well.
Typically activity diagrams are used to document a business process.
Activity diagrams explicitly include synchronization and timing information.
Sometime that's better than using a DFD as you know that a particular action
must complete before its successor starts.
Sometimes, it's worse because you may represent synchronization
in the model that is simply an artifact of the current process.
For example, I worked on cell phone point of sale system that would not
let the sales rep take money until the phone activation was completed.
This syncrhonization point was't really required for the business process
(and actually caused lost sales when the activation system was slow or down),
but had crept in through an activity diagram that listed activation as a pre-requisite for billing.
Activity diagrams are actually part of the UML replacement for flowcharts.
State diagrams
and
sequence diagrams (plus, to a lesser extent
collaboration diagrams (which are sort of a translation of sequence diagrams mapping objects spatially and time through notation)
nostly complete the picture of UML things that replace flowcharts.
For a system that takes in data, performs computations, and spits out answers, a structured design using flowcharts is often appropriate
This goal is often achieved with a
Data Flow Diagram
which many people mistake for a flow chart.
Structured analysis/design techniques from the 1970s
and 1980s developed the DFD concept
as part of the problem analysis phase.
Search for the likes of Coad, Yourdon, DeMarco, Gane and Sarson.
Some of these names are still familiar in the OO design world.
The key differences between a DFD and a flow chart are:
DFD does not imply sequencing of operations. Processes in a DFD can run in parallel.
Definition of the data stores. A DFD typically includes definitions of the
data stores and not simply the steps that will be taken to process the data.
In the 1980s, lots of people tried to slap object-oriented deisgn onto
structured analysis using various techniques (like making
the processes or data stores the objects).
It didn't work out so well.
Eventually, we got to
UML
from there after 10-15 years of haggling and stumbling;
some argue that it still isn't working out so well.
Except of course that the new legislation changes the law. In 1997 there was no law "protecting" the IP in a database. If HR 3261 (and its Senate cousin) pass and are signed into law, then they are the law of the land. A separate case invalidating the new laws would be needed.
You know, sitting here as my wife feeds our nine day old baby, I feel obligated to mention: the nipple is not an intuitive interface. It's not as simple as just sucking. Baby's need to learn it.
One proven technique for dealing with the administrator overlord type on
virus notifications is
to send them a polite message responding to every single bogus bounce you get.
Also kindly forwarding a copy of each infected message you receive can help
them realize the bogosity of the useless extra work created by needless notifications.
Where I'm working now, I have no need for such tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you read my comments elsewhere, it's pretty plain that I'm no Kerry cheerleader, but I think the concern here is that the "War Room" might really be just a tool for astroturfing the blogs, and that seems like a reasonable suspicion to me.
Of course it's a tool for astroturfing blogs. Compare to the Democrats efforts to get people to take online polls (a recent email from the Democrats urges party members to "Look for online polls at these national news websites, and make sure to vote in every one of them"), phone radio call-in shows, and write letters to the editor. The Republicans seem to do much better in the blog world. Apparently, the Democrats (as a party, and Kerry's folks in particular) didn't learn all that much from Dean.
These debates aren't about debating anything at all, they're an equal opportunity platform for the two major political parties (and no other parties) and their sponsors to try to spin things to the public.
If they had used valid HTML 4.01, this would already be in place - the alt attribute that provides a textual alternative to an image is mandatory in HTML 4.01.
The simple presence of an alt attibute does not necessarily help. Whether through inattention, or malicious compliance, many sites have alt attributes with such informative text as "img0573957.gif" or "1x1 transparent GIF". In the case of the former, it might be a critical image used to convey information. The latter is an example crying for use of alt="" for an image that conveys no meaning.
It's not really hard to get an accessible site. In a couple of days, a blog will be added to the Team Navanax web site to describe the efforts of a semi-random team of geeks to grok web site design, accessibility, and put up a new web site in 9 hours on October 2. This is part of an accessible web site competition put on several times a year in various locations by Knowbility
If I understand correctly, the question is asking about how to write the tax code so that sales taxes cannot be charged...
That wouldn't be a question. That would be a position. The question (paraphrased) is "what is your position on taxes related to the Internet?" My paraphrase of Kerry's unclear answer, based on the IFTA which he cosponsored, is "I am against taxing broadband access and in favor of allowing states to charge sales tax (as long as only one state gets tax on each transaction)". So, he's against your position (as inferred from what you think the question meant to be) that there should be no sales tax on Internet commerce. His position appears to be the same as that of President Bush.
The IFTA was written back when the taxation situation was completely unclear and the protection against multiple taxation seemed important to many at the time. Specifically, they were trying to protect against attempts to have multiple states (the state where the business resides, the state where the server resides, the state from which the order was placed, the state to which the order was shipped) taxing a single transaction. It ought to be analagous to placing a phone order where there is a well-defined prioritization to choose the single state that gets to tax.
Kerry: ..."multiple or discriminatory" taxes on electronic commerce...
I have to assume Kerry did not really answer the question asked about sales taxes on internet sales,
I think that would be an incorrect assumption, the prohibition on "multiple aor discriminatory" taxes is there to prevent multiple sales taxes. The oroginal act is a tad poor at explaining how that should be done, but it does prevent multiple sales tax from different states being applied (it still allies state/county/municipal sales tax, but prohibits taxes from multiple states).
In other words, Kerry thinks it's OK to have sales tax, but we need to make sure you aren't taxed by multiple states.
Source: section 1104, #6 of the IFTA as published by the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce.
And let's not forget the awesome manganese nodule cover story for the Glomar Explorer. A fantastical tale of potato sized manganese nodules littering the abyssal floor of the ocean. Riches to be had for the taking. It continues to be quoted by some as a reason justifying deep sea exploration.
You: The University of Alberta does a lot of work on poker programs.
Eliza: Please go on.
You: One of their aims is to create a program that can compete in the World Series of Poker. However, poker is such a complex game (for computers, that is) that at the moment the research group would be satisfied if their program would survive the first round.
Eliza: Why do you mention computers?
You: You see, poker is more about beating another person, than about calculations. The best poker players win because they can entice their opponents to make mistakes.
Eliza:Oh, i see poker is more about beating another person than about calculations the best poker players win because they can entice their opponents to make mistakes.
You: This is psychology, not math.
Eliza: Please go on.
You: Computers are notoriously bad at psychology.
Eliza: Why do you mention computers?
RA 12, DEC -39 puts it in Hyrda, which according to 5 seconds of looking in "Distant Suns" trial version on my work Windows box, is seriously blocked by the Sun these days. It's about 45 degrees south of Leo, whenever it becomes visible.
They did identify it as 2M1207 at 230 light years. A quick google suggests this set of coordinates from some Prospero observations in February, coordinates reproduced here (the original file has observation configuration as well):
# Prospero Observation Template File
# Created: 2004 Feb 12 [9:36:32] by saveobs.pl Version 2.2
# For: John Gizis
#
PROJECT=UDEL-04A-0005
IMGTYPE=OBJECT
OBJECT=2M1207
RA=12 07 33.4
DEC=-39 32 54
EQUINOX=2000.0
MODE=DUAL
This is not correct. My own experience watching my GPS receiver is that the satellites (and their locations) change while I am in a relatively unchanging location. When I move 10-20 miles over a period of hours, the satellite list, and the relative locations plotted on the GPS, change completely. According to NASA, GPS satellite have circular orbit of 20,200 km. A geosynchronous orbit is usually what people mean by "FIXED" and is at 35,786 km. NOAA is responsible for providing GPS ephemerodes and has historical data.
Current temperature at Austin Bergstrom International Airport: 91
Current humidity at ABIA: 56%
Current location of ABIA: Austin, TX
I believe that counts as the southern United States. We're usually binned in the "southwest", so I suppose you could try to hedge that.
However, current conditions for Tupelo Regional Airport, MS:
Temperature 84.9 F (29.4 C)
Dew Point 71.1 F (21.7 C)
Relative Humidity 63%
I think Mississippi counts as "the south" in anbody's book.
From reading the article, it sounds like he doesn't often pay. In the course of the day they profile, they mention two half-cups of coffee, both complimentary. Travel cost is still a problem. He reduces that by sleeping in his car at Wal-Mart.
numbers or another letter.
Which number can you confuse U with? And you must be pretty stupid to confuse Z with 5 or S.
You may have noticed, escpecially in some bad fonts or when it is crudely stamped out on metal (as a VIN is), that "U" somewhat resembles the letter "V". When you are reading old, rusty VIN plates stamped into metal 15 years ago on a a production line, it's not that hard to confuse "Z" with "2".
Most visually impaired people I have met do not read braille. I have met a fair number of people with various levels of visual impairment as I used to work at a non-profit that does web accessibility.
This is some weird combination of revisionist history (the ancient Greeks knew about irrational numbers) and just plain making shit up (irrational means it can't be expressed as a ratio of integers). See Mathworld's definition of irrational number for one more credible, and more researched, version.
Some time later, in the 1800's... imaginary....Imaginary numbers under a variety of names were discussed at least as early the 16th and 17th centuries and credible sources claim references back to the ancient Egyptians; this reference also says the term "imaginary" was in common use at the time of Descartes (though makes no reference in the online material as to who coined the term). Many less credible online sources place the name as coming from Descartes and claim it to be dergatory, but many of those sites appear to be copying from some common source of unknown origin. So, the guess that imaginary was derogatory may be correct.
I suppose one of four (calling the fact of the name and date of discovery each as guesses at the truth)possibly correct speculations isn't bad for just spewing stuff that sounds credible
While I hope that is true, I wonder if it is? Are "the very best" really required for the task at hand? If the farmer analogy really applies, there might be some lessons. Family farms are nearly dead. People who continue to operate small farms, do it because they are committed to the lifestyle, either through lack of alternatives or through love of the job. Large corporate farms have taken over much of the market and they focus on automation to reduce the required skill (and pay) level of employees.
Is this the future of programming? If it is, I'll probably become the analog of the very active and productive home gardener. I'll develop software on my own for my own use. I'll share it with my friends. I might even sell some for extra money on the side. It won't, however be my living. I don't know if that idea scares me or excites me; it certainly causes a strong adrenalin reaction.
Actually for some people, a schedule helps a lot. Knowing the plan creates opportunity for reinforcement; there's the habit of the plan and the guilt of not following it to help.
For some of us, a plan is really required. With a job, a 3 month old, a wife on disability from a difficult delivery, and a 4 year old, pretty much anything I want to do has to either be scheduled or done between midnight and 2 (which is really another way of saying I've scheduled those two hours for personal time/sleep, whichever seems more imporatnt). Thanks to scheduling, I did a 40 mile bicycle ride on Sunday averaging a not overly pathetic 16.4 miles per hour. I managed to do that even though I hadn't been out on my road bike in six months. I scheduled in mountain biking time, some health club time, hikes with the 4 year old (I'm just guessing the occasional need to carry him a mile with 250 foot climb probably helped my endurance a little).
Doesn't matter much what you do, just about any physical activity is better than nothing. A plan might help if your personality or circumstances dictate. The important thing, plan or not, is to get out and be active.
I took the arguable "these days" part to be questioning if evolution is currently helping, or indeed affecting in any way, humanity any longer. It seems all of the anti-survival behavior we humans engage in does not affect our ability to reproduce.
Funny you should use that word. Creating the TCPSocket as an "automatic" variable does, in fact, result in it being destroyed automatically when it goes out of scope.
Similarly, if you make it an instance variable of a class, it will be automatically destroyed (and therefore closed) when the instance containing it is destroyed. And if you feel you must use something pointer-like:
This gives transferrable ownership and the object pointed to will automatically be destroyed when the auto_ptr is automatically destroyed (at block exit or object destruction depending on context).
C++ is filled with options that let the "Resource Aquisition is Initialisation" pattern be used with automatic resource release at automatic destruction.
Wikipedia says it was Thomas J. Watson who said that in 1943. This was shortly before Thomas J. Watson Jr. came home from WWII and began promoting computers heavily within IBM. Other web source seem to agree. IBM doesn't seem to endorse it in official material though there is a presentation sitting on one of their sites that mentions it.
Whether or not it's true, the lesson of the quote is that even (especially?) people on the brink of a tipping point may not recognize the huge impact of the disruptive technology they are working with. Works the other way, too. Often those promoting some cool, geeky technology assume everyone will want one, when in fact they don't; at least not yet. Look at the many early attempts at "portable" computers or the many attempts at handheld devices and runs at tablet-style PCs. Ultimately, some of those technologies caught on (and tablets still look like they might) but at a much slower rate than anticipated.
Traffic analysis. Since not all intercepted messages can be decrypted in a timely fashion, one way intelligence is gathered is by looking at the communication patterns independent of the content. Knowing that bad person A sent unknown person B some set of messages (and even moreso noting that they were strongly encrypted) yields a strong suspicion that person B is part of the same bad collective as person A. By sending many messages all over that are noise, the real communication is lost in the noise. Not just the data in the communication, but the data about the communication.
UML lets you use an Activity Diagram for this as well. Typically activity diagrams are used to document a business process. Activity diagrams explicitly include synchronization and timing information. Sometime that's better than using a DFD as you know that a particular action must complete before its successor starts. Sometimes, it's worse because you may represent synchronization in the model that is simply an artifact of the current process. For example, I worked on cell phone point of sale system that would not let the sales rep take money until the phone activation was completed. This syncrhonization point was't really required for the business process (and actually caused lost sales when the activation system was slow or down), but had crept in through an activity diagram that listed activation as a pre-requisite for billing.
Activity diagrams are actually part of the UML replacement for flowcharts. State diagrams and sequence diagrams (plus, to a lesser extent collaboration diagrams (which are sort of a translation of sequence diagrams mapping objects spatially and time through notation) nostly complete the picture of UML things that replace flowcharts.
This goal is often achieved with a Data Flow Diagram which many people mistake for a flow chart. Structured analysis/design techniques from the 1970s and 1980s developed the DFD concept as part of the problem analysis phase. Search for the likes of Coad, Yourdon, DeMarco, Gane and Sarson. Some of these names are still familiar in the OO design world. The key differences between a DFD and a flow chart are:
In the 1980s, lots of people tried to slap object-oriented deisgn onto structured analysis using various techniques (like making the processes or data stores the objects). It didn't work out so well. Eventually, we got to UML from there after 10-15 years of haggling and stumbling; some argue that it still isn't working out so well.
Except of course that the new legislation changes the law. In 1997 there was no law "protecting" the IP in a database. If HR 3261 (and its Senate cousin) pass and are signed into law, then they are the law of the land. A separate case invalidating the new laws would be needed.
You know, sitting here as my wife feeds our nine day old baby, I feel obligated to mention: the nipple is not an intuitive interface. It's not as simple as just sucking. Baby's need to learn it.
One proven technique for dealing with the administrator overlord type on virus notifications is to send them a polite message responding to every single bogus bounce you get. Also kindly forwarding a copy of each infected message you receive can help them realize the bogosity of the useless extra work created by needless notifications.
Where I'm working now, I have no need for such tactics.